Session P88.2

A New Approach to Affordable and Reliable Cardiology PACS Architecture Using Open-Source Technology

P Marcheschi*, A Ciregia, A Mazzarisi, G Augiero, A Gori

Fondazione Gabriele Monasterio
Pisa, Italy

In the past ten years we followed the expansion of cardiology imaging technology and how it relates to integration, tele-consulting and standards. The new frontier of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) is expanding and require more technology and resources. Cardiology imaging is evolving and needs even more resources than before. The present work proposes a new approach to manage a large cardiology PACS installation using new open source facilities on affordable hardware, creating a reliable system. For this kind of application we have moved our core system from Linux platform to the new OpenSolaris unix and to novelty functions like Solaris Containers, ZFS file-system and Fair Share Scheduler, in order to achieve server consolidation, ease of use and reliability. We evaluated different lossless and lossy compression schema in order to achieve fast client/server response and to overcome low bandwidth connections limits, for tele-consulting purposes. Moreover actual local hi-bandwidth environments requires logical and physical network separation among imaging modalities by the use of virtual networks support and by aggregating physical links to expand the total network bandwidth. In order to assure the optimal service availability, the realized system is constantly monitored to quickly rise alerts and to graph system performance and status. Particular attention is posed to IT security, achieved with a cluster of two Linux firewall with network filtering support. With the proposed production system, at the moment, we are distributing over 20 millions images, coming from MRI, CT, PET, ECHO, CR/DR and XA imaging laboratories, integrating a large cardiology facility.

(Abstract Control Number: 251)